I have created secure notes using the Mac app but cannot view these notes using the iPhone app.

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jbhannon
jbhannon
Community Member

the title says it all. I created plain text secure notes using the desktop app but can't view them with the iPhone app.


1Password Version: 7.3.3
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: ios
Sync Type: dropbox
Referrer: forum-search:I have created secure notes using the Mac app but cannot view these notes using the iPhone app. what is the story?

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  • Ben
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    Hi @jbhannon

    I'm sorry to hear about the trouble viewing your notes. Does sync appear to be working otherwise? E.g. if you create a new Login item on the iPhone does it appear on the Mac? Or is sync not working?

    Ben

  • jbhannon
    jbhannon
    Community Member
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    Yes. Sync works. The problem appears to be large notes. I was playing around today and it appears small notes work but large notes don't

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni
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    @jbhannon - are you entirely sure you have the exact same configuration of vaults on both devices? I'm asking because I want to make sure we don't miss something basic and simple to solve, before diving into deeper waters in our investigation. If you're certain you have the same vaults, synced via the same method, on both devices, then my next question would be: what do you mean by "large notes?" Do these notes have unusual features/formatting or anything else besides simple text? How many words or characters would you estimate they are?

  • jbhannon
    jbhannon
    Community Member
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    Hi. The large note has 12000 characters / 595 lines. It is plain text and started out life as a TextEdit file with all of my legacy passwords. When I cut out a small section of this file (23 lines 500 characters), and create a new secure note, it works. I see the same note on my mac and on my iphone. When I cut out a larger section (252 lines, 4600 characters) it does not work. I see the new note on my mac but not on my phone.

  • jbhannon
    jbhannon
    Community Member
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    I think I understand it now. When I look on the phone the "notes" section of the secure note is blank when the size of the note is large. For small notes, the text is displayed. But if I click "edit" and then "tap to edit" the note text appears for large notes. Sorry for the confusion.

  • Ben
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    Hi @jbhannon

    Thanks for the details. To test this I generated 9250 words (62,977 characters) of Lorem Ipsum and dumped it into a Secure Note in 1Password for Mac:

    It showed up almost instantly on my iPhone:

    For brevity's sake there is a lot of text not included in the screenshots, but I just wanted to show some of the details so you could see it is indeed the same item on both ends. I think that pretty well proves that 1Password is capable of handling and syncing notes of the length you're talking about, and greater. That said, I'm syncing my data via 1Password.com, rather than Dropbox. As such I think the next logical conclusion is to see if the problem is either with Dropbox or your note itself. To test if the problem is that Dropbox can't sync 1Password notes that long I'd suggest using the Lorem Ipsum generator I linked above to create a long block of text and then create a new Secure Note in 1Password for Mac with those contents. Then see if it shows up on iOS. If it does, that would lead me to believe there is something about your original note that is tripping us up. If it does not, then it seems this may be a limitation of Dropbox that we were unaware of.

    Please let me know how it turns out.

    Ben

  • jbhannon
    jbhannon
    Community Member
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    Hi. Thanks for the test. I did a similar test using the first 12000 chars of Moby Dick and it worked. But it still does not work with my large note. I will now look to see if there are some strange/illegal characters in my file. Thanks for your help

  • Ben
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    You're very welcome. I'm glad to hear that may have pointed us in the right direction (the contents of the note potentially being the issue). Please let us know what you find.

    Ben

  • 1pwuser31547
    1pwuser31547
    Community Member
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    Hi Ben.
    Would you please clarify what portions of secure note are encrypted?
    In your example above would the entire text of Lorem Ipsum be encrypted (at same level as a password- at rest and in transit ) or are passwords the only data entry that are encrypted?

    Is there a character limit here for encryption?
    Is there a way to obfuscate/conceal that text field (like a password entry)?

    What type of data in secure notes is NOT encrypted?
    Thanks

  • Ben
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    @1pwuser31547

    The last modified and created timestamps are not encrypted. All data that you enter into a Secure Note (title, note, any custom fields, etc) is encrypted. I'm not aware of any sort of character limit. If there is one, it wouldn't have an effect whether the data is encrypted or not. It is not currently possible to conceal text fields.

    I hope that helps. Should you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to ask.

    Ben

  • 1pwuser31547
    1pwuser31547
    Community Member
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    Thanks Ben

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni
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    @1pwuser31547: I'm not sure if this helps at this point, as it sounds like you've narrowed it down to another issue, but I wanted to clarify that while there is a not a length limit to notes, the old 1Password local vault formats had a limit of 256KB for the item itself -- not attachments, as those are stored separately from the item JSON; so if you find yourself wanting to store novels (or something of a similar length) in an old local vault, you may want to save it in a text file as an attachment instead. Alternatively, 1Password membership data has no such limitations, as we've got a lot more flexibility there, not having to be backward compatible with stuff from roughly a decade ago.

This discussion has been closed.